Open Book

Written By Ashley Park

Episode 1: Karen Russell

 

June 11, 2025

Award-winning author Karen Russell (Swamplandia!) chats about the joy of reading a book you love written by someone you love, how Stephen King led to sleepless nights as a child, and those “little black dress” books you always loan to a friend. Plus, Elena reveals her latest vacation read as a murder mystery starring "existential sheep." 

 
 
 

Show Notes

Karen Russell is the author of the award-winning Swamplandia, and most recently, The Antidote.

She was also recently a guest on Live Wire: Episode 670.

Books recommended by Karen:

Books mentioned by Elena:

 

  • Elena Passarello: Hi there, I'm writer Elena Passarello, and this is Open Book, a literary podcast from Live Wire Radio brought to you by Powell's Books, where we talk to writers about their reading habits. Now, when I'm not having fun being Live Wire's announcer, writing is my job. I am the author of two nonfiction books, and I'm currently mired in a third Book Project, please wish me luck. And outside my own writing projects, I teach the next generation of memoirists and essayists in an MFA program here in Oregon. And all of this is just to say that books are, without exaggeration, my whole life. On this inaugural episode of Open Book, we are talking to the one and only Karen Russell. Karen has written several works of fiction, including her novel, Swamplandia, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She's also the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant. And her latest is The Antidote. It is just this mesmerizing novel that's both well-researched and totally surprising. I would call it a fantastical dust bowl epic. And now she lives in damp, not very dusty Portland, but her career thus far can be described as both fantastical and epic too. I gotta tell you, I had a blast talking to Karen about going wild in the public library as a kid, which we both did. About whether or not Jane Eyre should be shelled in the horror section, and about how becoming a sports mom can really help make a dent in your to-be-read pile. Karen also gives us all quite a few book recommendations along the way, so you'll wanna keep your ears peeled for that. So now, without further ado, here she is. This is Karen Russell on Open Book. Oh my gosh, Karen Russell, welcome to Open Book. 

    Karen Russell: Hey, Elena. It's nice to see you again. 

    Elena Passarello: I am so excited to be talking to you, but this is going to be like torture for me because I am enthralled in your latest novel, The Antidote, and that is not what we're here to talk about. So before we begin, let me just say America and all the ships at sea, you should check this book out. It will make it difficult for you to go to work because you will want to keep reading. But I want to talk to you about what books make you not want to go work and keep reading. So as... As a reader, maybe we could start there. As a reader do you have a memory of a book that just kind of kept you in your chair, ignoring your deadlines, obligations, children, whatever? 

    Karen Russell: For sure. I was just now getting really excited about all the ships at sea and like all the mariners reading The Antidote and just abandoning it. 

    Elena Passarello: That sounds great. Periscope down. 

    Karen Russell: Yeah, I mean, I think that there's always that tension, right? Like I really do, especially as a younger person, I absolutely did all my real living in books. I mean that was the door that I would carry around. Like it is not hyperbole to say that books saved my life. And I was also like a sci-fi fantasy nerd at that time. I still am, you know? But yeah, I just went through different seasons. I really loved like The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, a fantasy classic when I was like very young. But I loved, you know, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. It's one of my favorite books. And I think it like deeply imprinted on me. I think this book owes a great debt to that one. 

    Elena Passarello: The heart is a lonely hunter. 

    Karen Russell: Yeah, by Kirsten McCullers, who was really kind of a baby when she wrote that masterpiece. Their eyes were watching. God, I loved 100 Years of Solitude. Um, and, but also, you know, Stephen King, I really loved you now, I went through a phase where horror, I don't know, spoke deeply to me, and I would just go to sixth grade looking like a gaunt veteran of war, you know? Because I hadn't slept in weeks. 

    Elena Passarello: Because you were up all night reading sinner. 

    Karen Russell: I was up all night reading It. 

    Karen Russell: Yeah, exactly right, and then I would just be like, sorry, Miss Timmis. 

    Elena Passarello: Were you reading these kinds of books roughly at the same time, like the Carson McCullers, the Stephen King, the fantasy? 

    Karen Russell: I really was. And I had this deal, you know, I think my mom was skeptical of genre books and in part because our library would put this like, I don't know, diminishing sticker on them of like a cross-eyed dragon or like a scary alien. You know, so I think she had just internalized some hierarchy, which many people do, right? Where she's like, well, literature is the brontes and Ray Bradbury must be, I dunno what it is. That has this like. A foolish dragon on it indicating that it's not high literature. Of course, one of the consequences of getting all of these books, if I got Jane Eyre, I could get Cujo, for example. That was the deal that we brokered. I think it made me question some of these taxonomies. I was like, well, they're ghosts and Jane Eyres. I really started to question as a very young person, why certain things are categorized as they are. You know and... 

    Elena Passarello: A rabid dog could totally show up at Mr. Rochester's house, right?  

    Karen Russell: 100%. Easily. I mean, what is scarier? Why is that not shelved as horror, for example, right? Or why is, I mean Stephen King has a book, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, that I teach. I think it's such a perfect book. And I think he's really like one of our, you know, for as lauded as he is, but like an undersung pro stylist. So I, you, know, I, yeah, I think kind of like reading like an omnivore at that early age for sure marked me in some way. 

    Elena Passarello: Karen, we were talking off mic about I'm the same way where like Zoom is sort of a technological marvel if I can make it work. And you said the same thing. What is your experience as a reader with different technological devices that aren't paper? Are you an audiobook person or a kindle person? 

    Karen Russell: Yeah, I think now that I have become to my own incredulity a sports mom, like I drive my eight-year-old to like many sports games and it's great to have audiobooks, although I will say there's like a lot of protestations, there's not always like so much in the shaded of what we're all keen to listen to. 

    Elena Passarello: Right? Because you're not doing what I do where you listen to an audiobook by yourself. There's an eight-year-old who's probably weighing in on... Kujo? What are you listening to? 

    Karen Russell: Or like watching a guy play basketball in his mind. I feel like he's strong. He like powerfully like disassociates what I have an adult book on or NPR or whatever. 

    Elena Passarello: What about, do you ever do... [Karen: It's an important skill.] Well, I mean, disassociating. What do you think about e-readers? 

    Karen Russell: I mean, I do, I love them when I'm traveling because it turns out that it's impossible to pack like nine hardcover books, you know, and also, you, know, clothes to hide your nudity. So it's good to have a Kindle for that reason. And I actually like fiction. It really has to be analog for me, usually. I prefer it to be. And stuff where there's sort of a, you know, where something is happening at the sentence level where it's not, you Non-fiction is a little easier, I think, because it's just a different demand. It's like, you know, things are often pretty explicit, and it's the information transfer is just happening in a different way. And I think fiction, like if I kind of get distracted or, yeah, if I'm driving, you know, I don't have like the full capacity to attend to whatever is micro pulsing. 

    Elena Passarello: No fiction audiobook. 

    Karen Russell: Sometimes, I mean, sometimes, sometimes. I mean I'm now in this new perverse zone where I'll have like the, I'll be reading and I'll also have the audio book. [Elena: Yeah.] Do you do that? 

    Elena Passarello: Yes, all the time. I kind of love it. There's certain kinds of books where I think when the on-ramp is audio, I get more engaged. But I think with the antidote, where we're kind of meeting different voices really early on, I think paper is better so I can kind of slowly absorb what's happening. Also, there's visuals in there. So I really like the opportunity to kind of pick my on-ramp. 

    Karen Russell: I totally agree. I was just remembering when my son was born, I listened to Lincoln and the Bardo as an audiobook. I will say I had to immediately pivot to the hardcover because it was voiced by 11 billion actors and I just was not capable. I'm like, I was already teetering on the edge of madness because of insomnia. I said, George, I got to meet you on the page. 

    Elena Passarello: Yeah, that's an interesting, because you'd think that would be perfect as an audio book, because it's poly vocal, as we would say in our classrooms. But the other thing about the audio book that got me was one of the voices was like Ron Swanson, Nick Offerman, who we love, who's been on Live Wire. So that's another reason why I pick paper over audio when I have already decided how the characters are and they sound in my head. Sometimes I can't go to another perfectly valid interpretation that the book actor is doing. 

    Karen Russell: Oh, totally. You know, I was kind of doing this toggling between the paper book and the audio book for Louise Erdrich's The Mighty Red, which is, it is excellent. And she reads her own work. And so there's something instructive about it. It's sort of like hearing the music composed on, you know, the original instrument. I always think I learned something. I noticed no one's ever asked me to read my own audio books. Is that true? Yeah, it's true. But it's thank God. It's a different skill, I think, you know. My brother read his audiobook, and I love. Yeah, there's something really intimate about it, and I just think it is interesting. Like you really, sometimes lines that I had read as kind of flat or uninflected are hilarious in the voice of the author, you know? And vice versa, too. 

    Elena Passarello: Humor is especially tricky, I think. 

    Karen Russell: Oh, yeah. 

    Elena Passarello: When you're, yeah, transferring it to someone else. Okay, so let me ask you this. Six books so far, and a couple of them are collections of short stories, so multiple stories. You've just got this long career as a writer. How is that changing who you are as a reader versus reading Kujo and Jane Eyre, you know, and striking these contracts or when you were a budding writer? What's it like now? 

    Karen Russell: Goodness. You know, it's just, it is really interesting. I think I'm, you know, from the vantage of midlife, things look a little different. I noticed with this book, it feels a little more straightforward and direct than some of the other things I've written. And that also somehow feels a bit particular to this book and what it's taking on and what it's interested in, but also maybe has something to do with the middle of my own story. But I am like the least reliable narrator for how I'm changing as a writer. You know like I'll be the last to know. 

    Elena Passarello: Well, what about as a reader? So I have written not six books, but I feel very different as a book reader now. And sometimes I wonder if it's just because I'm middle-aged and I have 16 jobs, and I'm much more into the short story than I ever was before. Oh, yeah. But I also wonder if making books has affected who I am as a reader. You know what I mean? 

    Karen Russell: Yeah, I do. I think I'm more interested in non-fiction than I was as a young person. And there's a different sort of curiosity and urgency to know about the world, maybe in proportion to how the stakes feel. I mean, so important right now. So I really, in a way that I guess is different and surprising, I'm like reading all of these books about soil, you know, or reading about non-fiction that's sort of directed towards different kinds of futures, right? 

    Elena Passarello: Yeah, totally. 

    Karen Russell: That just speaks to the moment that we're in, I guess. 

    Elena Passarello: I'm in the throes of putting a book together right now and I'm thinking about the vacation book. Did you do this, you know, where it's like, I can't really read exactly what I wanna read right now because I have to read non-fiction books about the equivalent of soil for me and then I have avoid certain things because they're too close to what I'm working on. Did you, for any of your book projects, did you ever have a vacation book or a big type of book that you couldn't wait to read once you were through the mire of putting the book together? 

    Karen Russell: Well, you know, it's funny. I mean, student manuscripts too, right? It's like, I think when some of your job is reading, finding that vacation book, it makes, it makes pleasure reading feel all the more like an illicit activity, right. Like there's always a stack of stuff I'm supposed to be reading. So it's sort of thrilling to be like, it's just a little crush. Like it just, and for me, you know, Kristin Arnett's book was that most recently. 

    Elena Passarello: Yes, the clown book.

    Karen Russell: Yes, Tommy, if you've heard this one. I mean, she's so brilliant. She sees all of us, flawed clowns with so much compassion. And I just felt so great to belly laugh. And I like with Kristin, who's a friend too. So it's like spending time with, with your friend, you know, on the page. 

    Elena Passarello: There's no better feeling than when someone you know and love wrote a book that you love. 

    Karen Russell: That just knocks it out of the park. There is no better feeling. It's true, because you enter with some trepidation. Like I do. 

    Elena Passarello: It feels like true love. Like it feels like that. It feels just a little crush. Like it's like, I mean, I have a husband and a family, but like, oh, I just love it so much. So my vacation read for the last book was this murder mystery told from the points of view of a flock of sheep. 

    Karen Russell: Amazing. 

    Elena Passarello: Three Bags Full. 

    Karen Russell: Oh my god, oh my god. I feel like I'm the target demographic for Three Bags Full.

    Elena Passarello: It's amazing. I think, yeah, it was originally written in Germany. It takes place in Scotland, but the sheep have to figure out these things that sheep don't know in order to solve the mystery of the shepherd who has been murdered. So they have to figure out like what it means to be there and not there. They have to figure out what it mean to tell a story. Like they really, it's like very German. It's like existential sheep murder mystery. 

    Karen Russell: I mean, I'm sorry for whoever got murdered, but even if it was just existential sheep hanging out, I feel like I'm all in. 

    Elena Passarello: I feel like you would love it. 

    Karen Russell: Yeah, let me tell you now, because I want to call it in advance. I feel proud of knowing this, like a carnival witch, what everybody's next vacation read is going to be. The poet Paige Lewis has written the most spectacular novel, Canon. They are so brilliant, and there's never been a book like this one. 

    Elena Passarello: Give me the sheep murder mystery. 

    Karen Russell: I mean, I really can't even do like a log line because it's that brilliant. They wrote a non-binary epic about two dueling prophets. There's a whale named Howbig. It's so good. There's none. I genuinely have never read anything like their book and I hope everybody reads it. 

    Elena Passarello: Purpose of podcast, figuring out what Layner's next vacation book is gonna be. And I think you just nailed it. I think we're gonna have to read this book. Oh, great. Do you have, Karen, like a little black dress book that you can kind of give to anyone and you kind of know that it's gonna be a hit? You know what I mean? 

    Karen Russell: Oh my goodness. I've given Elizabeth McCracken's books, like all of them actually, like her memoir, her novel, her stories. I feel like people adore, I mean, correctly, like. 

    Elena Passarello: She uses humor really well, too. 

    Karen Russell: She's a favorite, I sort of think the autobiography of Red, and that's not a book for everyone, but actually like [Elena: Ann Carson.] Yes. And it's a novel in verse about a little red-winged dragon. And I mean, that's sort of, I don't know why that just came to me, because it's actually, it's sort, maybe because we were talking about canon, I mean it's so singular. It's like the only one of its species in a way. I know what you- 

    Elena Passarello: Cause it's an evangelical book for a certain kind of reading. Like there are people I think who feel maybe like they can't read quote unquote weird stuff. 

    Karen Russell: Yeah. 

    Elena Passarello: And you're like, let me just get you into the race. 

    Karen Russell: It's a good starter book for that, right? Or it's kind of a good to kind of, yeah, I don't know. I felt very like pushed out of my own nest by that book. You did. Yeah, at the time that I read it, you know? And I just, I love it. But it's funny that that, I'm sure Ann Carson was like, that's not a little black dress book, you fool. But I- I'm with you. Do you have one? 

    Elena Passarello: Uh, I think Their Eyes Were Watching God is pretty good. 

    Karen Russell: Oh, yes.  

    Elena Passarello: That's one of the books, this is a question that I should ask more on this podcast. You know those books where you get to the last page and you immediately turn the book over and read the first page? Like you finish the book and you just go right back and you start it again, Clutch Fleischman's Syzygy Beauty is another one that I did that for. But yeah, I think Their Eyes Were Watching God is I think a lot of different people. I would give it to my dad, I would it to students, I give it my neighbor, people who like lyrical language, I think would like it. Yeah, and it's in Florida, so. 

    Karen Russell: Yeah, I know. I love that book. That was such an important book to me. Our house was flooded in Hurricane Andrew. We had to go live with relatives in Pennsylvania for a long time, and that book is so much about how that hurricane, I thought, there's nothing more vivid in our literature as a testament of the way that weather kind of shapes and unmakes people's lives. And it's such a beautiful love story also, but also such I mean, speaking of rabid, yeah, rabidity. 

    Elena Passarello: Yeah. 

    Karen Russell: It's terrifying, too. 

    Elena Passarello: Did you read the book before? Hurricane Andrew was in 92, right? Did you before or after? 

    Karen Russell: No, I read it after, and I think that's one reason that it was important to me. 

    Elena Passarello: Do you have a controversial book opinion? Karen Russell. 

    Karen Russell: I do. I mean, I do just think that books are better than film and television. That's just sort of on balance. I would say books are better. [Elena: Yes.] They're better 

    Elena Passarello: Will you be saying this to the film executives that want to make a major motion picture out of The Antidote?

    Karen Russell: No, I'm going to be like, they coerced me into saying that. It was a podcast about boobs. I really didn't have a choice. You didn't see how menacing the other people in the room were. There were three TVs stacked up and they were smashing them with bats and I had to agree. 

    Elena Passarello: Okay, so books are better. So there's no movie that's better than the book. There's no TV show that's better than a book. 

    Karen Russell: Oh, no, no. I just think like in aggregate, if you're like, what's better, books or film and TV? I break books always, which is maybe not even that controversial for somebody who's like I like to spend all of my life reading and writing. 

    Elena Passarello: I think it's good to put some airspace down for that. I think that's great. Okay, number two. 

    Karen Russell: Number two, this is like my crotchety midlife controversial opinion, Elena. I think there's too much white space right now in our fiction. It's tempting, okay, we're all so tired and our brains have been destroyed by these devices. We have to keep trying everybody. 

    Elena Passarello: So too much white spaces when you look at a page and someone has obviously hit the return key a lot between paragraphs. 

    Karen Russell: I'm just saying, listen, the poets, I'm not talking to you, okay, but I think in us, the readers and the writers of fiction, let's just keep trying to have sustained focus for a little longer. 

    Elena Passarello: I heard that being blamed on when somebody has kids, they start writing flash and they start using the return key a lot more. 

    Karen Russell: Okay, yeah, I'm also not speaking to new mothers. I need to retract. Look, okay, new mothers can do whatever the hell they want. You can just put down a whole salt shaker of white space. You're right, but...

    Elena Passarello: We're both teachers. I do sometimes when my students bring in something that has a lot of white space in it, I go, what if I forced you not to do that? How would that change the end of the place before the white space begins, and then the beginning of where the white space concludes? Like, what if you just had to do that work, what would you put there? 

    Karen Russell: Right what how would you bridge like you have to kind of hold? 

    Elena Passarello: You have to hold those choices, their feet to the fire, just a little bit to know that they're really supposed to be like that. 

    Karen Russell: Yeah, that it's very, that's it's deliberate and not just sort of someone tarzan swinging away from a narrative responsibility. 

    Elena Passarello: Tarzan swinging away like nope not gonna address that 

    Karen Russell: You're now, yeah. 

    Elena Passarello: So if there's a ton of white space in any book that I ever write, if I send you a galley, I'm just going to write, sorry, Karen, a little post-it note. 

    Karen Russell: Look, I already regret my controversial opinion. I'm going to say it's born out of my own insecurity that my attention is so contracted. I have really noticed here, how are you a different reader? I'm not proud of this, but to find the sustained focus to give a weighty book or a dense book. I was rereading Marquez, and you stand under these paragraphs that are like waterfalls of sound and sense. And I really. Struggle. I feel like those people that don't train for a marathon, they're like, I could run this, and then they're just limping along at the end. I really notice that there's been some real erosion of my own attention. So there you go, everybody. I speak to myself with my controversial opinion. 

    Elena Passarello: I think that's great. I think we all need to just spend a little bit more time with sustained attention and that will make everything better. That will make reading Marquez better. That will making reading Anne Carson better. That will be make reading a book where there's like a page of white space for every two sentences better. We all just need to pay attention just a little more. I've loved paying attention to you. Thank you so much for being on this podcast. That was author Karen Russell. Her newest novel, The Antidote, is out now, and you can order it at Powells.com. Thanks for listening to Open Book. I'm Elena Pasarello, your host. Our executive producer is Laura Hadden, and our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Eben Hoffer is our technical director. Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid is our mixer. A Walker Spring composed our theme song, and Ashley Park is our social media marketer. A big thanks to the entire staff at Live Wire Radio, the fine folks at PRX, and of course, Powell's Books for sponsoring this podcast.

Ashley Park
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